So I had a 500 back in the day.It had the 512kb expansion card,a second floppy drive and a 2400/300 modem.I used to create Tracker music and save the results onto cassette.
30 years later I have a studio full of Macs which allow me to record 40+ tracks at 192khz but I still hanker after the Amiga's clean, efficient operation.

To this end I just picked up a 1.33Ghz/512Mb/40Gb Mac Mini G4 from Shpoc for £50. It's boxed, with all the original discs which makes it a bit of a bargain. This afternoon I installed Morphos 3.10 on it and I am utterly astounded.

This OS is soooo good.So clean, so fast,light but powerful.OWB is a revelation.It seems to render most sites effectively.I'm loving what I've seen here.The Mac Mini, a 15 year old computer, is snappy and a joy to use. I'm running it alongside a Raspberry Pi 3B+ with Raspbian, a Mac Mini 2012 i5 2.5Ghz/16Gb on OS X10.14 and a Mac Pro 2008 running 10.11 with 32Gb yet Morphos feels quicker than all of them.

I guess simplicity is something we've all been missing since the days when your entire OS could live on an 880mb floppy.

Hats off to the developers. I can see myself using this everyday. Take my money!

This forum is a great place to read about others experiences with Morphos. I wish i had a story to tell you all about my "difficult install" but it went smoothly and was fuss free. Part of that might be that I'm not using Wifi.

I'm going to try and get back here frequently to read of your experiences.

Cheers

Paddy

Welcome back :)

@ Padster - Welcome and glad you like what you've invested in.

If you've put v3.10 on your system I'd thoroughly recommend updating to v3.11 (the most current) as OWB on the v3.10 has a few issues, and 3.11 fixes those issues, and a lot of other issues that sadly came with v3.10.

Don't forget to look through the MorphOS Library for more guidance, and come back here if you can't find what you need there, as there are lots of users here knowledgeable and willing to help.

There are MUI and MorphOS nuances that are radically different than a standard Amiga OS, but that, overall, is a major improvement over Amiga OS IMHO.

[ Edited by NewSense 17.08.2019 - 15:59 ]

\o/

Yesss, you got the point! :D

Welcome to the party and while I share the enthusiasm for MorphOS and praise all the good things it's fair and necessary to also mention that there are of course also some shortcomings. Not to spit into the soup, but with a realisctic view on the things it's easier to keep the fire burning - which is possible as I'm onboard since 2001 (0.4 release) IIIRC.

Thanks for all the responses folks.I've installed Chrysalis as suggested and it certainly has some interesting content. So far I'm coming to terms with the window behaviour OS wide and the quirks of the file system,It's certainly more polished than my old Workbench 1.2!

I had a crash today,downloading Chrysalis.iso the OWB app chose to use the RAM disk as the default download location,without checking there was enough space.Definitely one for the developers to look at.

Loving my rapid boot and shutdown times though....

An issue I had with Chrysalis was that my mouse would randomly be double-clicking on single clicks. On a fresh install of 3.11 it was ok, but after Chrysalis, that is when it happened. I will have to look into it further.

For some gaming you could try the MorphOS port/rework of Tower 57 and the same of author published a few original freeware and commercial games via his Cherry Darling label.

Welcome to MorphOS world, I read that you like make music, for MorphOS we have the program Soundbankster available here
https://tcheko.binaryriot.org/soundbankster/
To edit songs.
And good choice install Chrysalis pack, and visit the morphos-storage with all Software for MorphOS games and tools.

Welcome back Padster,

Like many Amiga users, I stopped using my A1000 & A2000 around 1995 or 1996 and did not return to actively following what was going on with the Amiga community, and finding out about MorphOS, until just prior to MorphOS releasing support for the PPC MacMini. Before that I was just browsing eBay and collecting all of the Amiga hardware and systems that I couldn't afford when they were first released. My collection grew quite large at one time, but now I have reduced it to only a dozen or so, and I focus on MorphOS primarily, though the FPGA re-implementations of the Amiga have also caught my interest. If you think that the "Official" AmigaOS running on AmigaOne hardware looks interesting, I would caution you to do your research before jumping into a purchase of that hardware, as there is tons of turmoil within the developing owner of AmigaOS4, and other than the good work that is being done by third parties, such as the developer network that A-Eon and AmigaKit have put together, not much (if anything) appears to be happening with Hyperion Entertainment in regards to doing development work on AmigaOS4.

Great to read that another former Amiga user has returned, and even better that you are enjoying MorphOS. If you have any programming interest and skills, there is an excellent scripting language that is actively being developed for the Amiga, both Classic OS3.1, and OS4, plus MorphOS, MacOSX, Windows, Android & iOS support. You can develop on any of the supported platforms, and compile for any of the supported target platforms. It is called Hollywood, and is based on the LUA scripting language.

> finding out about MorphOS, until just prior to
> MorphOS releasing support for the PPC MacMini.

Considering your MorphZone registration date says "2006/3/21", I assume that "just" means "at least 3½ years" ;-)

> If you think that the "Official" AmigaOS running on AmigaOne
> hardware looks interesting, I would caution you to do your
> research before jumping into a purchase of that hardware

If it's AmigaOne hardware that is supported also by MorphOS, he will always be able to switch to that and forget about OS4 :-)

> [...] Amiga, both Classic OS3.1, and OS4, plus MorphOS, MacOSX,
> Windows, Android & iOS support. You can develop on any of
> the supported platforms [...]. It is called Hollywood

Compiling for Android requires Windows, and compiling for iOS requires macOS.

Official Amiga Os is the only one that is binary compatible with old 68k software and has modern OpenGL.
It may be important for some developers.
Also only one running in WinUAE that has modern gdb.



[ Edited by ppcamiga1 20.08.2019 - 20:17 ]

Thanks guys, lots of interesting info here and plenty for me to think about in terms of experimenting with Amiga type systems. My daily driver is a 2012 Mac Mini running the latest Mac OS but I also run UAE on a Mac Pro 2008 and use Zorin OS on one of my laptops. I guess I just enjoy trying different options outside the standard MacOs/Windows arena.

The FPGA Amiga implementations interest me greatly. Does anyone have recommendation on a reasonably priced option (c £200) to try this? As I understand it this is not emulation and so the machines should be able to run anything that ran on an A500?

Still loving MOS. The speed on the G4 Mini is insane for such an old computer. Its so useable and it really begs the question why so many OS's are so bloated.

> As I understand it this is not emulation

Yes, these are reimplementations.

> and so the machines should be able to run anything that ran on an A500?

Compatibility with a certain Amiga model is not a question of emulation vs. reimplementation but a question of accuracy, no matter if it's emulation or reimplementation. WinUAE for instance is an emulator and can be configured to be extremely compatible with virtually any Amiga model.

> it really begs the question why so many OS's are so bloated.

One reason for the perceived slowness of other OS is their memory protection ability, which MorphOS lacks in typical Amiga fashion.

Quote:

I think MiSTer provides the best bang for the buck currently. Not sure though as I don't have 1st hand experience with this kinf of devices.

MiSTer: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/wiki

Quote:

Of course it is. Problem is just that some people insist that only 100% SW running under some host-OS qualifies as "emulation" completely ignoring the meaning of the word.

Both FPGA and UAE style emulation work by looking at the 68k and OCS/ECS/AGA from the outside, recreate that behaviour as good as they can with code that is then loaded/executed on modern generic silicon.

Only with FPGA you'll find that on a custom PCB instead of an off the shelf mobo.

> code that is then loaded/executed on modern generic silicon.

...and in the case of an FPGA is used to configure the FPGA by wiring its logic gates according to the behaviour specified in the HDL code previously uploaded to the FPGA's memory.

Quote:

Time flies when your having fun. I didn't realize that it was a whole three and a half years after I began following this forum that the first release of MorphOS for the MacMini came out. Didn't seem like I had been playing around with my Efika for that long.

Quote:

The caution is still valid IMO, due to the cost of the hardware, and the fact that you can run MorphOS as well, and in some instances, better and faster on much cheaper used Mac PPC hardware.

Quote:

I did not know that about Hollywood compilers only run on Windows for the Android, and MacOSX for the iOS compiler. Thanks for the correction.